Beautiful
by Kralia
Summary: People change and it is unhealthy to be in love with a memory. BellatrixVoldemort. A bit AU because I'm stupid and got the time all wrong.
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Andromeda had already been at the school for three years when Bellatrix first arrived. Bellatrix had somehow expected her to be the girl she was at home, tall and domineering, wrapping herself in cold and hostility. To Bellatrix's surprise, however, Andromeda changed in almost every way the moment she left her parents, standing in the midst of Muggles on platform 9 ¾, trying not to breathe in the air.

Bellatrix was left completely alone as she watched her sister go off with her friends. Staring forlornly after Andromeda, she finally dragged her trunk to an empty compartment and sat down, alone. She had been there barely ten seconds before the door burst open and suddenly she was surrounded by a group of sixth and seventh years. They looked rather surprised to have a first year in their midst.

One of them knelt down, pushed his face up against hers. Bellatrix looked right into his eyes. They were a bright blue, contrasting with his thick black hair.

_Beautiful_, she thought, surprising herself.

"Now then, _kiddie_, why don't you toddle off to people a bit nearer your age, eh? Leave us big people in peace?"

She didn't move and the boy sneered, an ugly expression marring his perfect features. "I asked you once. I'm not going to ask you again."

Keeping her brown eyes fixed on his blue ones, Bellatrix pulled her trunk from the luggage rack and dragged it out of the compartment, quietly sliding the door shut behind her.

She found other first years, of course, but found none to be her equal. They talked of such trivial things that if she was trapped with them she would close her ears to them and meditate. Bellatrix did not have any friends at Hogwarts.

The idea of the beautiful boy stayed in her mind all throughout her first year at Hogwarts. She was sorted into Slytherin and joined him in the cold dungeons underneath the school.

Every night she would curl herself up in one of the big, enveloping armchairs in the common room and watch him. He surrounded himself with such idiotic people – they fawned around him like rats, always allowing him the warmest spot beside the fire, doing his NEWT coursework for him so he had more time to pursue things outside of the curriculum, always trying to scrabble above each other for his favour. Bellatrix hated and scorned them. She considered only herself to be his equal.

_One day I will have you_, she thought to herself as she sat in shadow, his face illuminated by the firelight on a cold January night. She scolded herself for thinking it. Making silent promises to oneself never made anything happen.


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AN: Doh. I just realised there's actually something like twenty years between them, rather than eight. But ignore that? Please?

Fifty one years later, Bellatrix Lestrange sits in a hard chair in a room of murderers. Her once long and luxurious black hair is now cut roughly around her shoulders, streaked with grey. Her hands, once soft and unworked, are now gnarled and calloused. A crone's hands.

Her master is no longer beautiful. Now part snake, with hard, paper-white skin. There is nothing left of the boy she used to watch except his own memories. He does not even occupy the same body.

She worries about him. Her master might be technically immortal, but she does not think his mind will survive being ripped from its body a second time. She hates the thought of his mind, driven insane, somewhere where she cannot find it. She thinks death would be preferable, but knows he would not agree.

She wonders if the other Death Eaters consider usurping him. Her master might have been the most powerful wizard of centuries in his prime but now he is weak, trapped in a body that does not suit him, his very soul maimed and ripped apart. She is scared that one of her more ambitious comrades might try to take his place. Lucius seems to be growing restless. It would only take a quick curse in the back to finish him and if he died she would follow him. She is scared for herself as well as him.

She knows he does not love her, no more than he can love anyone. He does not even seem to love himself. Bellatrix does not understand what keeps him going with no motivation but hate. She pities him. She cannot imagine living without loving him at the same time. They go hand in hand.

She worked hard to get to the position she is in today, so close to him. She shamelessly used Rodolphus Lestrange – he had a brother amongst the Death Eaters. She made Rodolphus get both of them involved. Rodolphus loved her enough to do anything for her while she only felt coldness when she looked at him. Rodolphus was dropped like an empty shell when finally Bellatrix penetrated the inner circle of her master's followers. From there she advanced on her own raw cruelty and strength. She was trusted with the most important of operations and she never, ever failed. Nobody fails the Dark Lord, especially not her.

She offered herself to him the night she broke out of Azkaban and after fifty years her silent promise was finally fulfilled. Now she sleeps in a tiny room next to his in Lucius's mansion. Lucius doesn't like it – he likes to pretend that he is the Dark Lord's right hand, but Bellatrix's master would never let Lucius sleep so near to him.

He sends Nagini to fetch her whenever he wants her, which is not often, and Bellatrix comes into his room, still dressed in nothing but her long white nightdress. She does not bother to make herself look beautiful. The Dark Lord cares nothing for beauty. She has thought about what could possibly attract him to her many times and has come to the conclusion that he loves her undamaged soul rather than her mind. She worries that her soul is becoming too worn down for him.

When he touches her she feels shivers of revulsion, delight, self hatred and love, and knows that life would not be the same without it. She wishes that he could love her, that he would forget about all the killing and destruction and simply run away with her. Together forever. But she knows that that will never happen and it is silly to think of it. Instead she tries to make him love her with more and more vicousness. She tortured the Longbottoms into insanity. She doesn't care. All her emotions, hate and love, desire and repulsion, regret and pride, exhileration and sadness are tangled up with him and they always will be.

She wishes their union had happened fifty one years before, when she was innocent and he was beautiful.


End file.
